THE BEST I CAN SAY OF ANYTHING IS THAT IT WILL END
I am a liar. Look: under these clothes I am hiding
a body. I’m waiting for an axe, a ditch. I’m shopping
for cement shoes, a lake so dark that none
of its languages have words for surface or shore.

Emma Bolden

the river entering the
sea a sheet of
paper

an escalation of policy
slivers of nightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s glass
slipper

Scott Metz

sleep handcuffed to a dimension

sting medicine the lakeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s blue diction

Â

an ashen language in the drive-by of our bones

Cherie Hunter Day

my late motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
small rhyming dictionary
has no entry for grief

minute hand
hour hand
second hand
armada

John Levy

For N.A.S.A.’s Mars/MAVEN project

We give each other
space knowing infinity’s
the last of its kind

HUMILITY

As a flea on bedrock tries to sense blood
poet you may have started

to get through to more life as life tries
to get through to you

that is no rock
only this dog of the world you are riding.

David Giannini
Â

Part Exchange: Two Epigrams
Florus:
Don’t elect me emperor, for god’s sake.
The UK or the Ukraine: which would you take?
What do you prefer: rheumatism or balls-ache?
Hadrian:
It’s the crack of noon: you’re still not awake?
Need the hair of the dog for that headache?
I wouldn’t be flea-bit Florus for anyone’s sake.

Alan Halsey

Mallory in the Mountains
Left his compass at Camp V, his torch at Camp VI
inserted camera plates back to front
thought twice about oxygen
They found a broken
figure of uncertain direction
eaten by ravens

Venice
Brackish lagoon, scarlet jasper.
Is war really possible without fantasy?
At the café, history tides
in translation. I drift across
the giddy surface of morning,
watching the arhythmic
pavement-tic
of impatient capital
impossible to disintricate.

Chris Beckett

Stromboli – a volcanic island.
The lazy flatulence of a moped slowing;
the ascending scales as the surf spills
and darkens the already black granular sand.
A night time walk with no street lights on – cartoon voices
from a garden showing movies
next to a bookshop
whose yellow light warms the books.

Untitled
a friend still
down the road – it’s geographical luck
a friend still down
the road –
it’s geographical luck
a friend
still down the road –
it’s
geographical luck.

Victoria Bean

Â

anonymous arterial...humanity-sprayed walls

Helen Buckingham
Â

the toe of Jesus
in a stained-glass shard—
whistle of a train

Michael Dylan Welch

climbing out
of the subway
next to
the churchyard
the smell of
freshly cut grass

Â

FATE
the eyes of the potato.
the teeth of the comb.
the mouth of the river.

Â

Â

THE ROOM
the room
they were given
full of animals
that never existed
full of names
for those animals
and the instructions
for their use

Bob Heman
Â

Â

at the end of the sordid life some beautiful illness

Jim Kacian

Â

not right in the head
ever again
watching sparrows

Â

you
look up
from
planting
bulb’s
into
fall’s
new
spaces

John Martone

Â

roses clamber over your daunting fatigue

Â

under a wheelbarrow a snake absorbing grace

Susan Diridoni

Â

a cluster of grasshoppers
unravel
the rain shadow

Alan Summers

ICON
I fall asleep to crickets
trapped in the heating vent.
The neighbor’s dog
wakes me, snapping
at moths in the fence. Dinner
is yellow beets, lettuce,
and beer. Whose plates
are these? Tonight the dead
are everywhere. I ask
words that remain—winter,
symphony, delusion—what,
if anything, I should say.

FREAKED WITH THE TASK OF TRYING TO ACCOUNT
FOR IT ALL
Midday an owl calls out from the retarded peonies.

Rob Schlegel

what might suffice a peony’s unfurled magnetic

Â

a delta
of refrains
sun-scrubbed
salt
you who speak of clarity

Â

a legacy rips
out the corner
of one eye

Eve Luckring

On Terseness

Here’s how I interrupted my story.
How I burnt my fingers on a match.
Here’s how I scared the bears away from the garbage.

Underneath the great deluge there was nothing much.
It soaked up all that it could (story, fire, wild beast) but most of it
is surfeit, is not beholden to absorption, has fled within the bulk
of itself.

Elizabeth Robinson

Â

nothing better
Basically, we saw nothing.
But we saw nothing better
than anyone else so far.

vacation
blueberries long gone, but
the sun drops with that violet
past the bay. in the garvey
he dips traps.
elsewhere, we are told
we might stay.

Â

home
a street is a blank
between the breathing.
hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s how to name
it: a foreign
city, missing trees,
indian tribes. lawns
are an indoor rendered out.
reverse it. the fern kneels
above the doily.
borders of soil, family.
a blind dalmatian
barks through the afternoon.

Autobiography
Your true self fumbles at the copy
machine, mumbling about the scare quotes.
She’s skeptical about your love
of Chet Baker – you, the prosecutor
in a floral shirt. She eats a salad,
says she’ll return to the unfinished project
of the Enlightenment.

hunger of knife and fork â&#x20AC;&#x201C;
ice caps, ice trays,
ice fallen on the countertop
breakfast carefully laid out on the table:
which cups when turned over
have nothing
underneath?

Jaime Robles

Â

the weight of the rain
presses, presses down
on the playground
spits out children
like watermelon seeds

Marc Thompson

IN SITU, SUTURED
skies full of bats
a strange twilight
scrubbed clean
by the storm
•
goodbye absentee ballot
goodbye peppermill
goodbye to slowly leaking hopes
•
inessentials
wander in and out of
our inattentive lives
it’s the endless stream of hours
that undoes us
time and time again

Michael Hennessey

THREE CIRCLES IN A ROW
My hat’s been on all day.
I made the purple more blue,
have spent a lifetime learning to feel nothing.
I find it’s almost never the same.
I swallow my pride, start with goodbye;
there is a long time before anything happens.
Welcome: please arrive before you depart.
Faint bird tracks in the snow.

STUTTERING
‘I’ve often argued that color is
a kind of embarrassment to language.’
–David Batchelor

Small areas of colour
spill from behind black.
I’m not sure if it’s blood clot
or scab, or what the difference is.
Turns out he wrote the book
about stuttering which I’d read,
as well as the book of quotes
and ideas that I love.
Poured paint’s allowed to buckle
and scar as it dries out:
small pools of colour
above black on the page.

Rupert M Loydell

Â

David Miller

only a drawing
of a labyrinth, only
the moon’s pull

Â

gone
below
venus
(her
begging
bowl)

Â

river of heaven bomb as slang for lover

Mark Harris

revision
you advised when writing
I should take a step back
make it less personal
change settings
dates
the ‘he’ to ‘she’
so when touching you
I was touching her
kissing her
then I lost the thread
and she was kissing me
I could feel her warmth
her fingers pulling my ear
and I was not in love with you

Anna Arov

Â

READING
On
a train/ in seat for 2 a woman reads PEOPLE &
a Hassid
reads
TORAH/
They
both
looked /
relaxed
Dec. 2005/ NYC